God’s Delight in Himself Alone soul is to be measured by the object of its love” (18).
Applying this statement to God, Piper contends that the
The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in
Being God, by John Piper. Sisters: Multnomah
Publishers, 2000.
D rawing upon the Scriptures and the writings of
Henry Scougal and Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, a
former professor of theology at Bethel College and the
current senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in
Minneapolis, presents a portrait of God in The Pleasures
of God (hereafter, Pleasures) by probing various aspects
of His pleasure. With pastoral tenderness, theological dis-
cipline, readable style, and a sound biblical foundation,
Piper asserts that from the fountain of God’s happiness in
His unique Son flows His work of creation, election, and
redemption in order that we may share in His happiness
for our satisfaction in Him and for the manifestation of
His glory. Penned by a seeker and lover of God, Pleasures
offers refreshing insights into the believers’ right to enjoy
God by meditating on the Bible with prayer. Against the
prevalent trend of anthropocentric theology that typical-
ly begins with and centers on transient human desires and
needs, Piper’s theocentric theology admirably maintains
its focus on the eternal God and His pleasure. Despite its
sustained focus on God’s pleasure, Pleasures still comes
short of penetrating to the core of the heart’s desire of
the Triune God—His desire to dispense Himself into His
chosen and redeemed people for the purpose of making
them His corporate expression in Christ. This shortcom-
ing rests both upon the book’s neglect of the prominent
place humanity occupies in God’s eternal purpose as the
means of His manifestation and upon its incomplete
understanding of the intrinsic being of the Triune God as
an eternal dispensing. Had Pleasures probed God’s yearn-
ing to reproduce His Son in humanity for His enlarged
expression and explored the organic implications of His
eternal triune being, it would have presented a fuller rev-
elation of God’s pleasure as unveiled in the Bible: namely,
God’s delight both in His individual expression—Christ
as the only begotten Son of God—and in His corporate
expression—Christ as the firstborn Son of God with the
believers as the many sons of God.
God’s Pleasures Presented in Pleasures
In the introduction, the author tells us that his book owes
its genesis to Henry Scougal’s statement in The Life of
God in the Soul of Man: “The worth and excellency of a
pleasures of God are the measure of the excellency of His
soul. In other words, to see the excellency, greatness, and
glory of God is to meditate on His joy, happiness, and
pleasures. Since every pleasure of God is “another feature
in the glory of his countenance,” Piper regards Pleasures
as “a vision of God through the lens of his happiness”
(21). His hope in writing the book is that people would
meditate on the pleasures of God to become “increasing-
ly satisfied with God and changed gradually into his
likeness” for the manifestation of God’s glory in the
world “through the mission of his church” (21).
T his revised and expanded edition of Piper’s 1991
book consists of ten chapters, each of which portrays
a distinct facet of God’s happiness. They are divided into
two sections. In the first section, the author portrays the
pleasure of God in His Son (chapter one), in all He does
(chapter two), in His creation (chapter three), in His
fame (chapter four), in election (chapter five), and in
bruising the Son (chapter six). In this cluster of chapters,
Piper considers God’s joy in His own perfections and self-
sufficiency. From eternity, God has been “supremely
happy in the fellowship of the Trinity” (21), delighting in
His Son as the image of His own perfections with the
Spirit of love flowing between them (Col. 1:15). From
this “self-replenishing joy” of the Trinity (22), God’s
enjoyment of His Son flows into us by the Holy Spirit so
that we share in the very pleasure that the Father has in
the Son (John 17:26). Since God acts only out of such an
overflow of His boundless self-sufficiency, He is never
under constraint by forces outside Himself to act con-
trary to His good pleasure. Thus, He enjoys His sovereign
freedom to do all His pleasure, for His acts are but the
expression of His pleasure (Psa. 135:6). For instance, He
rejoices in creating the universe because His creation
praises Him and expresses His glory, revealing His incom-
parable power and wisdom (104:31). He also delights in
spreading the fame of His name throughout the world
because He loves to be known for who He really is
(1 Sam. 12:22). God’s passion for His fame must moti-
vate us to spread His fame to all the unreached people of
the world. Furthermore, He delights in choosing with His
unconditional sovereignty who will be saved because this
election humbles sinners and exalts the glory of God
(Deut. 10:14-15). His election offers hope for effective
evangelism and guarantees the eventual triumph of
Christ’s great mission. Moreover, God delights in bruising
Volume VIII
No. 1
April 2003 75
His Son on the cross because by His redemptive death
Christ saved sinners to glorify the Father (Isa. 53:10).
Whereas the first six chapters focus on God’s pleasure in
His own nature and work, the last four chapters shift the
focus toward His pleasure in the attitudes and actions of
His people. In the second section, Piper describes the
pleasure of God in doing good to all who hope in Him
(chapter seven), in the prayers of the upright (chapter
eight), in personal obedience and public justice (chapter
nine), and in concealing Himself from the wise and reveal-
ing Himself to infants (chapter ten). In this group of
chapters, the author examines how we sinners can please
a holy God. God takes pleasure in doing good to those
who fear Him and hope in Him, for their fear reflects the
greatness of His power, and their hope, the bounty of His
grace (Psa. 147:10-11). In turn, the human response of
hope comes to verbal expression in prayer and active
expression in obedience. God delights in those who pray
with an upright heart because prayer satisfies the wants of
our soul while magnifying the wealth of God’s glory (Prov.
15:8). His pleasure in prayers is intimately associated with
His passion for the spread of His fame—the spread of His
Word throughout the earth—because “prayer is the power
that wields the weapon of the Word” (221). Thus, the
believers are charged to pray with a global wartime men-
tality to engage in spiritual warfare for the triumph of His
Word in every people, tribe, tongue, and nation. God also
delights in personal obedience, for our obedience is the
obedience of faith, which is itself the fruit of our delight
in Him (1 Sam. 15:22). Finally, God takes pleasure in con-
cealing Himself from the wise—those who boast in their
self-sufficiency and rely on their natural intelligence—and
in revealing Himself to infants—those who recognize their
helplessness and depend on Christ as the way to wisdom
(Luke 10:21). This is because “God’s goal in creation and
redemption is to humble the pride of man and exalt the
glory of his grace” (281). Hence, knowing God requires
not only serious reflection with the mind but also God’s
immediate supernatural revelation, which is reserved for
humble infants.
Piper rightly underscores the believers’ need to enjoy
God as their supreme delight, echoing a central theme of
his previous work, Desiring God. He writes in Pleasures,
“One must savor God as the most excellent of all beings.
That is what this book is about” (12). For Piper, the “pre-
eminent” sentence in the first edition of the book that
shapes his “present burden for the church and the world”
is the following: “Grace is the pleasure of God to magni-
fy the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power
to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God”
(11). Piper is convinced that “savoring the supremacy of
God in his own affections and in ours is utterly crucial for
the strength of the church and the suffering required to
finish the great commission” (11). Prizing joy in God as
76 Affirmation & Critique
the “greatest joy,” Piper admirably highlights the believ-
ers’ right to enjoy God, a truth dear to God’s heart and
central to the divine revelation but neglected, and even
spurned, by a great many believers (282).
P iper’s realization of the import of savoring God also
shapes his definition of faith: “The essence of faith is
being satisfied with all that God is for us in Christ” (247).
What satisfies us is not merely the promises of God but all
that God Himself is for us. Hence, according to the book,
“What faith embraces most earnestly is not just the reali-
ty of sins forgiven (as precious as that is) but the presence
of the living Christ in our hearts and the fullness of God
himself (Ephesians 3:17-19)” (247). Moreover, Piper
declares that faith is not just intellectual assent—it is “the
quenching of the soul’s thirst at the fountain of God”
(247). Citing John 6:35, 4:10, 14, and 7:37-38, the book
identifies believing in Jesus as coming to eat and drink the
bread of life and the living water “which are nothing other
than Jesus himself ” (248). Piper thus concludes that the
meaning of faith is that “when we eat this food and drink
this water we are satisfied with Jesus” (248). To his cred-
it, Piper’s conception of faith goes beyond the realm of
absolution from sin and rational assent and touches on the
subjective enjoyment of Christ Himself as food and drink.
Pleasures also offers a balanced exhortation to know God
by reading His written Word and praying for His revela-
tory work in us. Rightly critiquing pragmatism and
subjectivism as lacking the reality of objective truth,
Piper contends that the purpose of the mind is “not to
rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objec-
tive reality and to help the heart revel in God” (261). For
Piper, true knowledge of God comes through two media:
divine spiritual light—that is, God’s supernatural self-rev-
elation—and our disciplined labor on the objective
written Word of God. Recognizing a reciprocal effect
between these two media, Piper says, “Learning to pray
and learning to read are both essential” (288). Piper
underscores man’s absolute impotence to obtain knowl-
edge of God apart from His gracious self-revelation. He
thus quotes Luther’s three rules regarding theology:
“prayer, meditation, trial,” as well as his instruction
regarding the importance of prayer: “That the Holy
Scriptures cannot be penetrated by study and talent is
most certain. Therefore your first duty is to begin to pray,
and to pray to this effect that…He very graciously grant
you a true understanding of His words” (291). Lamenting
the dearth of references to God in so many Christians’
academic works, Piper echoes Jonathan Edwards in con-
tending that since all Christian scholarship is rooted in
spiritual sight and requires a spiritual taste for God, to
engage in Christian scholarship one must be born again
and thereby savor the beauty of God’s nature. This obser-
vation is a much-needed indictment of the current state
of so-called Christian scholarship, which is characterized
by an excess of rationalistic intellectualism and a paucity God’s Pleasure in the Humanity of Christ
of the pure divine revelation.
Perhaps as a consequence of overlooking this biblical reve-
God’s Good Pleasure Revealed in the Bible lation, the book on the whole overemphasizes the divinity
of Christ to the neglect of His humanity. To be fair,
In spite of Pleasures’ many strengths, it suffers from sev- Pleasures attempts to portray God’s delight in becoming a
eral shortcomings that limit the biblical revelation of man in a span of three pages (34-36). Citing Colossians
God’s good pleasure. First, Pleasures neglects the crucial 2:9, John 1:14, and Luke 1:34-35, the book admirably
place humanity occupies in God’s eternal purpose. asserts that God “clothed the fullness of deity with a vir-
Though correctly underscoring God’s pleasure in His Son gin-born human nature, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
as the reflection of His perfections, the book falls short of God, the God-Man, in whom ‘the whole fullness of deity
underlining God’s pleasure in dwells bodily’” (35). Further, the
humanity as the means of His book should be commended for
manifestation. The Bible reveals
The entire Bible abounds claiming that “when God the
not only the preeminence of the with intimations that God’s Father and God the Son engaged
Son in the Godhead but also the thought is focused and His to unite deity and humanity in
prominence of humanity in Jesus, the Father rejoiced over
God’s heart (Psa. 8:3-6). With
heart is set upon humanity, this act” (36). Nearing the end of
respect to His eternal existence, for it is humanity that fulfills this section, however, the book
God delights in His Son, the sec- God’s heart’s desire for offers a biblical yet shortsighted
ond in the Godhead, who exists explanation of God’s delight in
in the form of God and expresses
His corporate duplication the fullness of deity dwelling in
God as the image of God (Phil. and expression. the human body of Jesus: “He
2:6; Col. 1:15). But with regard delighted in his Son’s readiness to
to His eternal economy to enlarge His expression through redeem the world” (36). Doubtless God rejoiced over
creation, God longs to reproduce His Son in humanity as becoming a man, for only this God-man could accomplish
His enlarged corporate manifestation. the redemption of God’s fallen creatures—by virtue of
His humanity, which could shed the blood of a genuine
God’s Pleasure in His Creation of Humanity man, and by virtue of His divinity, which could ensure the
eternal efficacy of that blood. Yet, more significantly, in
Pleasures briefly touches on the importance of humanity view of God’s eternal purpose—formed long before the
in God’s creation, saying that “the root of [God’s] delight fall of man-God delighted in becoming a man to establish
in creation has to do with imaging forth his own glory, a prototypical God-man—a man who lives God for the
because only after he created man and woman in his expression of God in humanity. From the manger to the
image did God add the word ‘very’ to the word ‘good.’” cross, Christ, the first God-man, unceasingly manifested
(82). Yet the book fails to reveal the intrinsic significance God in His human living as the prototype for His believ-
of God’s delight in creating humanity in His image from ers, the many God-men, His mass reproduction (John
the standpoint of the apostles’ teaching in the New 5:19; 6:57; 14:10). This God-expressing human living that
Testament. Paul declared that Christ, the Son of God, is bore the image of God brought great delight to God’s
the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15); he also wrote heart (Matt. 3:17), for it was a seminal fulfillment of His
that according to His purpose, God predestinated His original purpose (as intimated in Genesis 1:26) to have
chosen people to be conformed to the image of His Son His expanded expression in humanity. In this light, the
(Rom. 8:28-29). Juxtaposing Colossians 1:15 and Romans greatness of the mystery of godliness that Paul speaks of
8:28-29 with Genesis 1:26 suggests that from the per- lies not with God manifested in God but with God “man-
spective of the New Testament revelation, God’s delight ifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). While Christ never
in creating humanity in His image stems from His desire shrank from declaring His eternal status as the Son of
that a great many human beings, chosen before the foun- God, in His human living He repeatedly referred to
dation of the world and created according to the image of Himself as the Son of Man, a term that bespeaks His inti-
His Son in time, would be conformed to the image of His mate relationship and involvement with humankind.
Son to become His corporate reproduction and His Christ’s own emphasis on His humanity is in accord with
expanded expression (Eph. 1:5). From the creation of the divine revelation that it is as the Son of Man that
humanity to the culmination of the New Jerusalem, the Christ carries out God’s eternal economy. It is in His
entire Bible abounds with intimations that God’s thought humanity that Christ was born as the seed of woman to
is focused and His heart is set upon humanity, for it is bruise the serpent’s head, manifested God in the flesh,
humanity that fulfills God’s heart’s desire for His corpo- died for our redemption, resurrected with a body, sits now
rate duplication and expression. at the right hand of God as the Lord of all, and will return

Volume VIII
No. 1
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to earth to reign in the millennium and in eternity (Gen.
3:15; Gal. 4:4; Luke 24:39; Acts 7:56; 2:36; Matt. 19:28;
Rev. 22:1). Because Pleasures overstresses God’s pleasure
in Christ as the Son of God at the expense of God’s pleas-
ure in Christ as the Son of Man, it misses out on the
intrinsic significance of His humanity and human living in
God’s eternal purpose.
God’s Pleasure in His Firstborn Son
with His Many Sons
This imbalance leads to the book’s overemphasis on Christ
as the only begotten Son to the neglect of Christ as the
firstborn Son. The book portrays God’s delight in His Son:
As long as God has been God (eternally) he has been con-
scious of himself; and the image that he has of himself is
so perfect and so complete and so full as to be the living,
personal reproduction (or begetting) of himself. And this
living, personal image or radiance or form of God is God,
namely God the Son….[T]herefore God’s delight in the
Son is delight in himself. The original, the primal, the
deepest, the foundational joy of God is the joy he has in
his own perfections as he sees them reflected in the glory
of his Son. (42)
H ere Pleasures rightly touches on God’s pleasure to
beget Himself in His Son as His living reproduction
and expression. It is true that in His eternal existence,
God delights in His only begotten Son as His individual
expression, for in the Godhead, the Son, possessing the
same essence with and full attributes of the Father, alone
expresses God as the image of the invisible God, the
Word of God, the Witness of God, the mystery of God,
the effulgence of God’s glory, and the impress of God’s
substance (Phil. 2:6; John 1:1; Rev. 1:5; Col. 2:2; Heb.
1:3). It is equally true, however, that in His eternal econ-
omy to reproduce and manifest Himself in humanity,
God delights in His firstborn Son with His brothers, the
many sons of God, as His corporate expression, for they,
possessing God’s eternal life and divine nature, corpo-
rately express God in Christ as the Body of Christ, the
bride of Christ, the branches of the vine, the fullness of
God, the new man, and ultimately the New Jerusalem
(2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Cor. 12:12; John 3:29-30; 15:1-8; Eph.
3:19; Col. 3:10-11; Rev. 21:2). Pleasures mentions the
status of Christ as the only begotten Son, to the exclusion
of the firstborn Son. In contrast, the New Testament
reveals both statuses of Christ’s sonship, referring to His
divinity as the only Begotten five times (John 1:14, 18;
3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9) and to His divinity and humanity as
the Firstborn five times (Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:151, 18; Heb.
1:6; Rev. 1:5). The Old Testament also records Jehovah’s
own prophecy that intimates the dual aspect of His Son:
the children of Israel will look upon Christ in His second
advent and “wail over Him with wailing as for an only son
78 Affirmation & Critique
and cry bitterly over Him with bitter crying as for a first-
born son” (Zech. 12:10).
T he book’s omission of God’s delight in His Firstborn
with His many brothers is not insignificant, because
the fulfillment of God’s heart’s desire is dependent upon
Christ as the only begotten Son in the bosom of the
Father, becoming through His processes the firstborn Son
among many brothers. Relative to His identity in the
Godhead, Christ is eternally the only begotten Son of
God and can never have brothers. Yet in incarnation the
only begotten Son of God, who possessed in eternity only
divinity without humanity, became the Son of Man in
time, a God-man possessing both divinity and humanity.
Although the incarnate Christ was the Son of God by
virtue of His divinity (Matt. 16:16), His humanity, that is,
His human flesh, was not the Son of God—for, though
sinless, it did not have divinity. To bring Christ’s human
nature into the divine sonship, God begot Christ in His
humanity by imparting the divine life into His humanity in
His resurrection. In Acts 13:33 Paul thus declares, “God
has fully fulfilled this promise to us their children in rais-
ing up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘You
are My Son; this day have I begotten You.’” Christ in His
divinity has always been the only begotten Son, but in His
resurrection, His humanity was begotten to be the Son of
God, thus pioneering the way for human beings to
become the sons of God (Heb. 2:10-12). In Romans 1:3-
4, Paul unveils that this birth of Christ in His humanity as
the Son of God is tantamount to the human seed becom-
ing the divine Son in resurrection: Christ in His humanity,
the seed of David according to the flesh, “was designated
the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holi-
ness out of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our
Lord.” Since it was in resurrection that His humanity was
begotten by God and thus designated the Son of God,
Paul calls Him “the Firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18).
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
begotten Christ in His humanity in His resurrection, has
also “regenerated us unto a living hope through the resur-
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3). On the
day of His resurrection, Christ thus called His disciples
His brothers, and His Father their Father (Matt. 28:10;
John 20:17). In resurrection Christ thus became “the
Firstborn among many brothers,” and His many brothers,
His reproduction, will be progressively conformed to His
image to be designated sons of God (Rom. 8:19, 29).
While the firstborn Son will be forever preeminent among
and never share His deity with His many brothers,
through conformation the many sons of God will become
the same as their elder Brother, the firstborn Son—in life,
nature, and expression, but not in the Godhead. This will
satisfy God’s heart’s desire to have a corporate reproduc-
tion of His beloved Son in humanity (Col. 1:18; 3:4; 2 Pet.
1:4; 1 John 3:2). Admittedly, Pleasures refers to Romans
8:29 ten times and speaks of our being conformed to the
image of Christ. Unfortunately, however, the book treats
our conformity to the image of Christ mainly as our des-
tiny as fixed by the love of God. It thus falls short of
unveiling our conformation to the image of Christ as the
fulfillment of God’s great delight in His Firstborn and His
many brothers as the corporate enlargement of His Son.
Perhaps the root cause of the book’s omission of God’s
delight in His many sons is its premise. It is a premise
that, ironically, ignores the central pleasure of God:
We need to see first and foremost that God is God—that
he is perfect and complete in himself, that he is over-
flowingly happy in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity,
and that he does not need us to complete his fullness and
is not deficient without us. (22)
This assumption leads the book to contend that “God has
no needs that I could ever be required to satisfy. God has
no deficiencies that I might be required to supply” (208).
There is no denying that in the Godhead, the Triune God
is self-existing and self-sufficient, as implied by His own
title: “I Am Who I Am” (Exo. 3:14); from eternity to eter-
nity there is no lack, deficiency, or defect within Himself.
Yet the Bible—in particular Ephesians 1—also reveals that
God has a desire, the good pleasure of His will—“His
good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, unto the
economy of the fullness of the times” (vv. 5, 9-10).
According to His good pleasure, and under no external
coercion, God formulated His eternal economy derived
from His eternal desire to have an enlarged expression of
Himself. This expression involves humanity. The execu-
tion of His purpose is central to His satisfaction and
ultimately requires human cooperation; in this sense, God
needs man for the satisfaction of His good pleasure. A
desire for expression in and through humanity does not
imply any ontological deficiency in God. This desire does
not spring from a lack or imperfection in God Himself
that jeopardizes His self-existence or diminishes the
delight within the fellowship of the Divine Trinity; rather,
it is a reflection of His magnanimity that He would will-
ingly enlarge the fellowship that He enjoys within the
Trinity to human vessels with the capacity to receive,
enjoy, and participate in this fellowship (1 John 1:3; 1 Cor.
1:9; John 14:20; 17:21).
I n John 12:24 the incarnate Christ, the unique God-
man, unveils God’s desire to reproduce, and even
multiply, His Son in humanity: “Unless the grain of wheat
falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it
dies, it bears much fruit” (emphasis added). Just as a sin-
gle grain of wheat falls into the ground, dies, and grows
up to be reproduced as many grains of wheat, Christ as
the only begotten Son of God in the flesh passed through
death and resurrected to become the firstborn Son of
God with the many sons of God as His reproduction for
the fulfillment of God’s desire for the multiplication of
His Son in life. God’s desire and need for His many sons
does not arise from any lack of His joy in His only begot-
ten Son but from His profound delight in His eternal Son,
the Beloved. God so loved the Son that He desired and
purposed to reproduce His Son in a great many human
beings, making Him the firstborn Son and them His many
sons for an enlarged expression of Himself in the Son
(17:24). Had Pleasures touched this desire in God’s
heart, it would have declared that God does have a need
which we should satisfy, for we exist for the sole purpose
of satisfying God’s longing for His many sons as the cor-
porate reproduction of His beloved Son.
God’s Pleasure in Dispensing Himself
into the Tripartite Man
Perhaps the lack of emphasis on God’s desire for many
sons lies in the book’s failure to grasp the kernel of how
God accomplishes His good pleasure. God intends to
reproduce His Son in humanity by dispensing Himself as
life into His chosen and redeemed tripartite elect for their
enjoyment and His expression. He desires to work
Himself in the Son as the Spirit into our tripartite being.
Paul thus testifies of “God who operates in you both the
willing and the working for His good pleasure,” namely, to
have many sons conformed to the image of His Son (Phil.
2:13, emphasis added). Recognizing God’s desire to work
in us, Pleasures attempts to describe a broad span of God’s
salvation of man:
Salvation is the big biblical term that describes all God’s
saving work for us and in us, past, present, and future. We
“have been saved” (Ephesians 2:8), “are being saved”
(1 Corinthians 1:18) and “will be saved” (Romans 13:11;
1 Peter 1:5). (245)
Y et the book comes short of revealing that God’s salvif-
ic work occurs through the dispensing of Himself into
our tripartite vessel. This process began with the regener-
ation of our spirit in the past, progresses with the
transformation of our soul in the present, and will con-
summate with the redemption of our body in the future
(John 3:6; 2 Cor. 3:18; 1 Pet. 1:22-23; Rom. 8:23). In
Romans 8, Paul reveals God’s desire to dispense Himself
as life into our tripartite being, first making our spirit life,
then making our soul (represented by our mind) life, and
eventually giving life to our mortal bodies (vv. 10, 6, 11).
Only by enjoying this divine dispensing of the Triune God
into our being can we be matured in the divine life and
thus conformed to the image of the firstborn Son as His
corporate duplication; apart from the divine dispensing,
we can only resort to our human endeavors to adopt a
godly posture and cultivate moral behavior.
Pleasures seems to stress these human endeavors in the
Volume VIII
No. 1
April 2003 79
last three chapters, which purport to address “the practi-
cal matter of how we can delight the heart of God” (208).
In the main, Pleasures suggests that we can please God by
fearing Him, hoping in Him, praying to Him with an
upright heart, obeying His commandments, and depend-
ing on Him. Yet what pleases God is not primarily our
humble disposition or our obedient actions but the consti-
tution of our tripartite being with God Himself. Since
God delights only in His Son, what delights the indwelling
God within us is nothing other than His Son being
wrought into us and reproduced in us. Paul tells the
Galatian believers the goal of his apostolic ministry: “My
children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is
formed in you” (4:19). Paul prays on behalf of the
Ephesian believers that the indwelling Christ may make
His home in their hearts (3:17). What delights God is not
merely the upright heart that trembles at His Word and
trusts in His mercy, as the book suggests, but the Christ-
saturated heart—where Christ has possessed, occupied,
and permeated every part of our inner being with Himself.
What delights God is not our cultivation of humility, piety,
and integrity, as Pleasures indicates, but Christ revealed in
us, Christ living in us, Christ magnified in us, and Christ
becoming all of our human virtues until each of us can
unashamedly declare with Paul, “For to me, to live is
Christ” (Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; Phil. 1:20-21). Pleasures is
right in positing that “how we view God will determine
our idea of how we can please God” (208). If Pleasures
had presented God as the dispensing Triune God who
delights only in His Son, it would have revealed His good
pleasure in seeing His beloved Son, Christ, wrought into
His many sons and repeating His God-manifesting human
living in their living for the corporate manifestation of
God in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:15-16).
T his oversight is related to the book’s neglect of God’s
subjective interaction with His believers in their
human spirit. To its credit, the book twice speaks of our
need to become “‘spiritual’ ones” who can receive the
revelation of God according to 1 Corinthians 2:15 (279,
283). Yet overall, Pleasures falls short of underscoring the
pivotal role of the human spirit in the divine economy. In
unveiling His heart’s yearning for a dwelling place in man,
Jehovah proclaims that He looks to the human spirit for
“the place of My rest” (Isa. 66:1-2; Eph. 2:22).
Consonant with John 4:7, which speaks of Christ’s long-
ing for a drink, verses 23-24 state that the Father “seeks”
the true worshippers who will “worship the Father in
spirit and truthfulness.” Since God is Spirit, God can fel-
lowship and interact with man only on the level of his
human spirit. In creation the Triune God formed the
human spirit as an organ to contact and receive Him, and
in regeneration He joined the believers’ human spirit with
the Divine Spirit to dwell in their regenerated spirit
(Zech. 12:1; John 3:5-6; 1 Cor. 6:17). Thus, for His rest
and satisfaction, God seeks, and needs, true worshippers—
80 Affirmation & Critique
believers who exercise their regenerated human spirit to
experience Him, fellowship with Him, and be filled with
Him. Apart from the union of the human spirit and the
Divine Spirit, no amount of so-called Christian endeav-
ors, however sincere or zealous, can contribute to the
fulfillment of God’s longing for His expression through
humanity.
Although Pleasures rightly underlines the importance of
prayer as “the power that wields the weapon of the Word”
(221), which is based on Ephesians 6:17-18, it neglects
Paul’s charge in the same verses to pray “at every time in
spirit.” The book encourages the believers to obey God’s
commandments by faith. Yet it fails to point out that faith
is in our regenerated spirit, the “spirit of faith,” wherein
dwells Christ, the Author and Perfecter of our faith
(2 Cor. 4:13; Heb. 12:2). Realizing that we can obey
God’s commandments only in our spirit, Paul repeatedly
commands the believers to live and walk by the spirit,
because when we walk according to the spirit, the right-
eous requirement of God’s law is spontaneously fulfilled
in us by the inward working of the Spirit of life (Gal. 5:16,
18, 25; Rom. 8:4). Although Pleasures admirably claims
that a “spiritual sense or taste for God” is a prerequisite
for Christian scholarship, its inability to distinguish the
human spirit from the human soul undercuts the force of
its claim (298). The book contends that “knowing God as
fully as possible demands immediate supernatural revela-
tion to the soul” (288). In contrast, Paul prays on behalf of
the Ephesian believers for “a spirit of wisdom and revela-
tion” in the full knowledge of God and tells them that the
mystery of Christ has been “revealed to His holy apostles
and prophets in spirit” (Eph. 1:17; 3:5, emphasis added).
God’s Pleasure in Manifesting Himself
as an Organic Being and an Eternal Dispensing
Pleasures’ omission of the Triune God’s central desire to
dispense Himself as life into tripartite men stems from its
conception of the Triune God in His eternal Being. In the
introduction the book posits that “the most fundamental
truth” with which we must begin is that “from all eterni-
ty God has been supremely happy in the fellowship of the
Trinity” (21). In the context of Pleasures, “Everything
hangs on the unbounded joy in the triune God from all
eternity” (39). The book’s primary characterization of
God’s eternal Being—His overflowing happiness in the
fellowship of the Trinity—accords with its description of
His people’s eternal destiny—enjoying in heaven God’s
pleasure in the Son and the Son’s infinite delight in the
Father. The final chapter of the book depicts the soul’s
end: “an infinite, eternal, mutual, holy energy of love and
pleasure between God the Father and God the Son flow-
ing out in the Person of God the Spirit, and filling the
souls of the redeemed with immeasurable and everlasting
joy” (311-312).
The book’s notion of the eternal Being of the Triune God
in terms of the mutual delight within the Trinity does have
a biblical basis. Yet it comes short of penetrating to the
heart of the biblical revelation of who the Triune God is in
His eternal existence. In the inaugural issue of Affirmation
& Critique, Kerry S. Robichaux in “Axioms of the Trinity”
contends that the terms Father, Son, and Spirit show that
the Triune God is an organic Being, and that as an organic
Being He is in Himself an eternal dispensing. The former
means that the Triune God is a Being of life: “As Father He
is the source of divine life, as Son He is the expression of
divine life, and as the Spirit He is the essence of divine
life” (8). The latter means that the Triune God is a
dynamic Being: “The Father is ever dispensing the divine
essence into the Son and thereby begetting Him eternally;
the Son is ever receiving and expressing that dispensing
and is thus eternally begotten of the Father; the Spirit is
ever dispensed as the divine essence by the Father and
eternally proceeds from Him” (11). As Pleasures rightly
points out, God “delights in being known for who he real-
ly is” (98). The Triune God, who is an organic Being and
an eternal dispensing in His eternal existence, desires in
His economy to make manifest who He is in His eternal
Being—through humanity. Fulfilling both this desire in
God’s heart and the purpose of our existence, we believ-
ers manifest that the Triune God is eternally an organic
Being because in regeneration we have been begotten of
God the Father with His divine life through the Spirit of
life and are thus His many sons, the many brothers of the
firstborn Son (John 1:12-13; Heb. 2:10-12). To satisfy the
desire of His heart, we believers can express that the
Triune God is an eternal dispensing because we, the tri-
partite vessel, can receive the divine dispensing of the
Triune God Himself by partaking of the divine nature of
the Father, eating Christ the Son as the bread of life, and
drinking the life-giving Spirit (2 Pet. 1:4; John 6:33, 48,
57; 1 Cor. 12:13; 15:45). Ultimately, God will find His
eternal delight in the New Jerusalem—His firstborn Son
united with His many sons completely conformed to His
image—for the New Jerusalem will forever validate that
the Triune God is an organic Being and an eternal dispens-
ing (Rev. 21:2, 7, 11). For eternity the many sons of God,
the constituents of the New Jerusalem, will enjoy the
divine dispensing of the Triune God who will feed them
with Himself in the Son as the tree of life and will flow
Himself out as the Spirit, the river of water of life, for our
supreme delight and His organic, corporate, and consum-
mate expression (22:1-2). In this light, the book’s
portrayal of the believers’ eternal destiny—delighting in
the pleasures of God in heaven—comes short of the bibli-
cal revelation of the believers’ eternal destiny, which
coincides with His eternal satisfaction in the New
Jerusalem (21:2; 22:14, 17). This shortcoming issues from
the failure to realize that the Triune God in His eternal
existence reflected in the economy of His salvation is not
merely a joyful Being—“this inexhaustible fountain of
self-replenishing joy,” as the book suggests (21-22)—but
more intrinsically, an organic Being and an eternal dispens-
ing—the Father as the fountain of life who takes pleasure
in manifesting Himself in the Son as the spring of life and
in flowing Himself into His many sons as the Spirit, the
river of life, to satisfy and saturate them with Himself
(Psa. 36:8-9; Jer. 2:13; John 4:14; 7:38-39).
A uthored by a lover of God, Pleasures admirably
affirms the believers’ right to enjoy God and their
need to study the Bible with prayer in order to know God
and His pleasures. Focusing on the pleasures of God
rather than the needs of man, the book clearly reveals
God’s delight in Himself reflected perfectly in His only
begotten Son. Yet it falls short of unveiling the center of
God’s good pleasure to reproduce His beloved Son in
many sons by dispensing Himself as life into redeemed
tripartite humanity. Had Pleasures probed more deeply
the biblical passages that disclose God’s desire to dupli-
cate His Son in humanity for His enlarged expression, it
would have revealed that God’s pleasure is not only in
God Himself alone but also in Himself wrought into and
expressed through redeemed humanity.
by David Yoon
Notes
1Detailed discussion of the implications of “the Firstborn of
all creation” in Colossians 1:15 is contained in Kerry S.
Robichaux’s article, “Christ the Firstborn,” in the April 1997
issue of Affirmation & Critique.
Works Cited
Robichaux, Kerry S. “Axioms of the Trinity.” Affirmation &
Critique I.1 (January 1996): 6-11.
———. “Christ the Firstborn.” Affirmation & Critique II.2
(April 1997): 30-38.
An Incomplete Understanding
of God’s Full Salvation
Saved from What? by R. C. Sproul. Wheaton:
Crossway Books, 2002.
I n 1969, at the Conwell School of Theology on the
campus of Temple University, a young man accosted R.
C. Sproul with a question: “Are you saved?” Unsure of
exactly how to answer, Sproul responded with the first
words that came to his mind: “Saved from what?”
Volume VIII
No. 1
April 2003 81
Sproul’s rejoinder, the young man’s faltering answer to it,
and a number of similar incidents throughout the ensuing
years made a deep impression on Sproul. Although many
evangelical Christians are full of zeal for the message of
the gospel, most of them possess little understanding of
the gospel they so zealously preach. Distressed by this
“apparent ignorance of the most elementary article of
Christianity,” salvation, Sproul in Saved from What?
(hereafter Saved), answers not only the title question but
also the questions “saved by what?” and “saved for what?”
(15, 18). Around these three central questions Sproul
organizes his book and through the progression of eight
chapters seeks to present a panorama of God’s salvation.
The central thrust of the book is that, having fallen in sin,
we are in desperate need of salvation from God’s wrath,
and through Christ’s redemptive work and our subjective
appropriation of it, we can be adopted to be God’s sons
and go to heaven, where we will see God in His glory. In
so great a salvation, we are saved “by God, from God, and
for God” (123). While there is certainly much to affirm
from the pages of this book, there are matters that stand
in need of careful critique.
Summary
In Part I, entitled “Saved from What?”, Saved introduces
the central concept of salvation as being salvation from the
wrath that is to come—the unique calamity from which
every sinful human being must be saved (22). In this sec-
tion, Saved accomplishes the twofold task of proving that
we not only need salvation but that we are unable to save
ourselves and thus are in need of a Savior. In Part II, “Saved
by What?” the sinner’s need in relation to a holy God is
atonement in general and the cross specifically, the cross
being the unique atoning act in the New Testament (37).
In this section, Saved introduces to us the three “actors” in
the drama of redemption—“man, God the Father, and
God the Son in His incarnate work as Messiah and
Redeemer” (51)—as well as the immense, threefold prob-
lem of sin that is solved by Christ’s substitutionary death
on the cross. After orienting the reader to the governing
principles of covenants in the Old Testament, Saved
describes how Christ on the cross took upon Himself the
curse that was upon us, became the curse, and suffered the
penalty of the law (83, 81). In this way redemption was
brought to us (85). In the final chapter of this section,
Saved presents the way that the sinner may subjectively
appropriate the benefits of Christ’s work. In “Saved for
What?” the third and briefest section of the book, Saved
identifies and enlarges upon the twofold purpose for which
God has accomplished so great a salvation for us: our adop-
tion as the sons of God and the beatific vision.
The Measure for Success
Saved implies that its mission is to educate an evangelical
82 Affirmation & Critique
Christian public that knows alarmingly little about the
salvation it seems to care so much about. “Do evangelical
Christians today have any clearer understanding of the
gospel, of what it means to be saved?” writes Sproul.
“Sadly…there often seems to be little understanding even
among those who are most active in evangelical circles”
(14-15). “And when we’re talking about salvation,”
Sproul continues several pages later, “we are talking about
the concept that is the central theme of all sacred
Scripture—a concept that it is imperative to understand”
(18). Given the unique importance of salvation in the
Bible and given the purpose of this volume to elucidate
the subject to the broader Christian public, Sproul,
whether explicitly or not, sets a high standard by which
to measure this book’s success.
An Accurate View of Redemption
As its title would indicate, Saved expends considerable
energies emphasizing the grave situation of the unsaved
and their desperate need for salvation. Given the decline
of the notion of original sin and total depravity among
increasing numbers of Christian circles and the ascent of
more palatable ideas that emphasize God’s love to the
detriment of God’s righteousness, most believers today
are largely comfortable and self-satisfied, possessing but
the slightest inkling of the truly frightful situation relat-
ed to their sinful situation. Concerned by such
nonchalance, Sproul gently yet repeatedly directs the
reader to the severity of sin on one hand, the righteous-
ness and holiness of God on the other, and the
irreconcilability of God and man unless the problem of
sin is resolved. Saved warns the reader: “We have dis-
counted the severity of our sin” while simultaneously
forgetting that God is a “God of perfect holiness, who
demands satisfaction for His justice and who will not
wink at sin” (28, 41). Thus, the book warns against the
passivity, even callousness, to our real situation (34).
“The last thing in the world the impenitent sinner ever
wants to meet on the other side of the grave,” Saved
notes, is a holy and just God (25). The reader is then
helped to realize that there is nothing that he can do of
himself to solve his problem with God (45-46). Saved
deals blow after blow to illusions that one may have of
after a Pelagian fashion somehow surviving judgment by
himself and being justified by the works of the flesh (31-
32). In other words, not only can sinners not live without
salvation; they also require a Savior. Saved does an
admirable job of exposing the sinner’s fundamental prob-
lem of sin, awakens in him the realization that he
desperately needs to be saved from the wrath of a holy
and righteous God, and lays bare his false hope of his
being able to solve the problem by himself.
Although it gives an able portrayal of man’s need for sal-
vation and a Savior, Saved’s most notable strength lies in
its concise and clear presentation of the means of God’s An Inadequate Understanding
salvation—the atoning work of Christ. In these chapters, of God’s Complete Salvation
Saved gives an excellent thumbnail sketch of the central
factors of Christ’s redemption. In “The Drama of While Saved is solid concerning many of the fundamen-
Redemption” Saved discusses the three dimensions of tals of the salvation that God has afforded us, it is by no
sin—sin as a debt, an act of enmity, and a crime—and how means complete. A vital element of God’s salvation—
each of these aspects of sin is solved by Christ with indeed, an entire aspect of it—is neglected altogether. So
respect to both God and man. In the case of sin as a debt, glaring is this omission that the positive impact that por-
God is a creditor, we are the debtors who cannot pay our tions of this book might have on a reader is greatly
debts (51-52), and Christ is our “surety,” “the One who compromised. Anyone who reads this book, even if he is
cosigns our note…back[ing] up our indebtedness by taking helped regarding some aspects of salvation, will be hin-
upon Himself the obligation to dered from viewing entire vistas
pay what must be paid” (55). As of the biblical revelation.
regards sin as an act of enmity, we
God created man in a
are the enemies of God, God is particular way in order Saved’s goal is to educate the
the injured or offended party, and to fulfill His heart’s desire. Christian public concerning the
Christ is the Mediator who recon- salvation that God has prepared
ciles God and us through His
God created him in for us. Its success, therefore,
death (55-59). Concerning sin as His own image and according must rise or fall based upon
a crime, God functions as the to His own likeness whether it accurately and thor-
Governor and the Judge, we are oughly presents this crucial item
the criminals, and Christ is our
as a vessel to contain Him of the Christian faith. In this
Substitute who suffers the penal- and express Him. regard, the matters that Saved
ty of our crime in our place omits are so fundamental to the
(59-62). This clear and concise presentation of sin and means and goal of God’s complete salvation that full
how the problem of sin is solved by Christ with regard to attention must be called to their absence.
God and us is exemplary and will no doubt be of consid-
erable help to those who lack clarity concerning these A Synopsis of God’s Complete Salvation
matters.
In eternity past, God had a good pleasure, a heart’s desire:

C ontinuing his exposition of Christ’s redemption to be expressed through man (Eph. 1:9, 4-6). God creat-
Sproul elucidates the role of blessing and curse in the ed man in a particular way in order to fulfill His heart’s
death of Christ. After orienting the reader to the govern- desire. God created him in His own image and according
ing principles of covenants in the Old Testament—namely to His own likeness as a vessel to contain Him and express
that keeping the stipulations of a covenant results in bless- Him (Gen. 1:26). In order for this to be realized, man
ing (a condition of being in God’s presence) and breaching needs to be filled with God as life so that he might be
the stipulations results in curse (a condition of being cut exactly like Him in life, nature, and expression. Despite
off from God’s presence)—Saved seeks to help the read- God’s high intention, made possible by the placement of
er understand the atonement of Christ in the broader man in front of the tree of life, man succumbed to the
scope of the covenant. temptation of Satan and violated God’s loving command
by eating of the fruit of the wrong tree. This violated
In the final chapter of Part II (ch. 7), Saved makes known God’s righteousness. As a result, man was prohibited by
to us how we can appropriate the benefits of Christ’s God’s righteousness from receiving God’s life and thus
work. Through the imputation of our unrighteousness to from fulfilling God’s purpose. In order to restore man to
Christ and the imputation of His righteousness to us, we a condition in which His purpose could be fulfilled, God’s
are justified and declared righteous by God. At the very righteousness, which cannot be compromised (cf. Psa.
moment we receive Jesus Christ, all that He has accom- 89:14), had to be satisfied—the fallen sinners had to be
plished in His redemption is applied to us and we are redeemed in a way that satisfied God’s righteousness. The
justified. “Justification is by Christ alone. It is by His Lord Jesus Christ accomplished such a redemption and
merit, His righteousness, His life, His death that we can fulfilled the requirements of God’s righteousness by living
stand in the presence of a holy God. Without Christ we a perfect life and dying on the cross for us. This redemp-
are without hope because all we can ever offer to God is tion, consisting of the sinner’s forgiveness (Luke 24:47),
our ‘unjustness’” (99). Once again, Sproul clearly affirms cleansing (Heb. 1:3), justification (Rom. 3:24-25), recon-
the truth by making known clearly the practical means by ciliation (5:10), and positional sanctification (1 Cor. 1:2;
which we as sinners condemned by God can be saved Heb. 13:12), solved sinful man’s profound dilemma with
from the coming wrath. respect to God’s righteousness and brought him back to a

Volume VIII
No. 1
April 2003 83

position in which God could once again accomplish what
had been in His heart from eternity past. Because Christ’s
redemption restores us to a right relationship with God,
we can describe it as judicial (Lee 8). By its very nature,
judicial redemption is a strictly restorative procedure—it
reclaims man from a destiny of suffering God’s judgment
and brings him back to where he was before the fall with
respect to God’s righteousness and God’s purpose.
H owever, judicial redemption in itself does not bring
God and man any closer to achieving God’s good
pleasure than they were prior to the entrance of sin any
more than repairing a punctured tire en route will in itself
bring a driver to his destination. Judicial redemption alone
can never fulfill God’s purpose; at most, it qualifies the
sinner to participate in God’s purpose. It is only at the
point that the sinner appropriates Christ’s judicial
redemption by believing into Him that the purpose of
God’s salvation begins to unfold, for there yet remains an
entire aspect of salvation for the forgiven, cleansed, justi-
fied, reconciled, and positionally sanctified sinner to
experience. This second aspect of salvation is organic (8),
for it is the side of salvation that God accomplishes in His
redeemed elect by His divine life (Rom. 5:10). If judicial
redemption is the procedure of God’s salvation, organic
salvation is the purpose, for it directly fulfills and accom-
plishes the good pleasure which God purposed in Himself.
From the beginning, God’s good pleasure has been that He
would fill man with His life so that through man God
might be expressed. Our experience of organic salvation
consummates in such an expression. Organic salvation is a
process that consists of regeneration, by which we receive
the eternal life of God, sanctification in our disposition
(6:19), renewing in our mind (12:2), transformation in our
soul (2 Cor. 3:18), conformation to the image of God’s
firstborn Son (maturity in the divine life) (Rom. 8:29),
and glorification (Heb. 2:10) (Lee 14). The organic aspect
of God’s complete salvation issues in the built up Body of
Christ (Eph. 4:15-16). As we experience God’s salvation
in life, we are built up as the living Body of Christ, which
becomes and is consummated in the city of life, the New
Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2). When God’s organic salvation has
been carried out in full, the “Triune God and His regener-
ated, sanctified, transformed, and glorified elect will be
joined and mingled as one to constitute an organism as the
enlargement and expression of God in eternity” (14).
Both—judicial redemption and organic salvation—are nec-
essary for God’s complete salvation. Saved lacks this
comprehensive view of salvation.
Saved from What?
The first part of Saved addresses the question “saved
from what?” Saved basically answers, “The ultimate sal-
vation that any human being can ever experience is
rescue from the wrath that is to come,” and “When we
84 Affirmation & Critique
talk about salvation biblically, we have to remember from
what ultimately we are saved. We are saved from the
wrath that is to come, the wrath of God” (22, 69). And
again, “When we consider that we deserve to be con-
sumed by His fury and realize that His fury has instead
consumed Jesus in our place, when we recognize the
greatness of the peril, we then are able to see the great-
ness of the salvation that He has bestowed upon us”
(26). With such statements before us, it is easy to under-
stand the thrust of statements such as, “The supreme
achievement of the cross is that Christ has placated the
wrath of God, which would burn against me were I not
covered by His sacrifice,” and “The work of Christ was
done to placate the wrath of God” (70, 69).
W hile it is indisputable that “Jesus is the Savior who
saves us from the wrath that is to come” (24), sal-
vation entails a rescue from more than just the fury of a
righteous God. Through our experience of God’s organic
salvation, we are saved from a host of things that hinder
our receiving God’s life to express Him, including our nat-
ural life, our unholy nature, our unrenewed mind,
self-likeness, immaturity as sons of God, and everything
that falls short of the glory of God. First, through regen-
eration, which is our being born of the Spirit and our
receiving the impartation of the divine life into our spirit,
we are saved from our old manner of living, namely a liv-
ing which is by the natural—and fallen—human life. By
receiving the divine life through regeneration and by par-
taking daily of Christ, who is our life (Col. 3:4), in the
Word and in prayer, we no longer live by our natural life
but by Christ’s life within us as the basis and the means
(John 6:57; Gal. 2:20; Matt. 16:24). Second, when we
experience the sanctification of our disposition, we enjoy
the addition of the holy nature of God into our being. By
being sanctified in our disposition by the Holy Spirit
(Rom. 15:16) with the resurrection life of Christ, our nat-
ural, unholy disposition is sanctified with the divine, holy
nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4) so that we may be holy unto
God (Eph. 1:4). Dispositional sanctification is thus a mar-
velous salvation from our unholy nature. Third, when we
allow the renewing Spirit to mingle with our human spir-
it and spread into our mind (1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 4:23) by
the teaching of the holy Scriptures and the enlightening of
the Holy Spirit, we experience a great deliverance from
the influence of the old creation in our mind and subjec-
tively enter into God’s new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), thus to
participate in God’s mind (Phil. 2:5). Fourth, our experi-
ence of transformation fills us with God Himself so that
we may express the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18) and be
saved from the shame of expressing ourselves (Phil. 1:19-
20). Fifth, in conformation, we participate in God’s
divinity in full and are matured to be the full-grown sons
of God (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:5). Conformation therefore
saves us from immaturity as the sons of God. Finally, our
experience of being glorified, which is the consummation
of our experience of God’s complete salvation, sets us
wholly free from everything that is not God or that is con-
trary to His life, nature, mind, being, image, and glory
(Heb. 2:10; Phil. 3:21). Christ’s judicial redemption saves
us from the condemnation of the holy and righteous God,
and for that we are eternally grateful. But how much more
excelling, knowledge-surpassing, and unsearchably rich is
the organic salvation God has prepared for those who love
Him and who are called according to His eternal good
pleasure! Would that Saved had presented the truth and
experience of God’s organic salvation and the power it has
to save us from all things that stand against the fulfillment
of God’s heart’s desire instead of focusing solely on the
judicial side of salvation.
Saved by What?
Part II’s central thesis is that due to the fall, man needs
atonement—the “sine qua non of the Christian faith”
(47)—and the cross—the unique atoning act in the New
Testament (37, 47). These two matters form the core
message of this part of the book and answer the question,
“Saved by what?” “The means by which God accomplish-
es this great salvation may be described as the most
crucial aspect of the work of Christ. Indeed, His work
goes to the crux of the matter” (41), taking care of our
problem of sin (51), our need for a ransom (64), our
being cursed (81), and our want of justification (98-99).
On the cross Christ accomplished the reconciling action
that satisfied God’s justice and restored our relationship
with God on this cross (47). Hence, Christ’s cross is
absolutely indispensable to our salvation (48) and is, in
fact, the very means that God uses to save us. This fact
Saved presents very ably. Nevertheless, there is a distinc-
tion between the two aspects of God’s complete salvation
(judicial and organic), and Saved falls short of offering a
complete treatment of this salvation that God has pre-
pared for us.
I n Romans 5:10 the apostle Paul writes, “For if we,
being enemies, were reconciled to God through the
death of His Son, much more we will be saved in His
life, having been reconciled.” Two phrases figure promi-
nently in this verse, both related to the means of
salvation. The first phrase, through the death of His Son
is in conjunction with reconciled (implying salvation),
and the second phrase, in His life, modifies the word
saved. This verse thus displays the means of God’s full
salvation in both its judicial and organic aspects. Through
the death of God’s Son, God has forgiven, cleansed, jus-
tified, and reconciled us to Himself. This aspect of
salvation Christ accomplishes outside of us for our objec-
tive salvation—a positional salvation from condemnation
and eternal punishment (v. 9). However, our salvation
should not be limited to what Christ accomplished out-
side of us some two thousand years ago; we need to
experience throughout our lifetime the subjective salva-
tion that Christ accomplishes within us by the working
of His divine life—the salvation that commenced with
our regeneration and continues through our dispositional
sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation,
and eventually consummates with glorification. There-
fore, contrary to the view that Saved presents, the means
of God’s salvation is not merely outward and judicial in
nature; that is, God’s salvation is not merely through
Christ’s dying a redemptive death on the cross in order
to save us from the execution of His righteous judgment
and eventual punishment upon us. The means of God’s
salvation is also inward and organic—as the life-giving
Spirit, He regenerates us with Himself as life and then
spreads as life within us until our entire being—spirit,
soul, and body—is fully saturated with Himself as life.
Saved never so much as mentions this aspect of God’s
full salvation in its discussion of what it is that we are
saved by.
Saved for What?
In Part III, “Saved for What,” Saved identifies adoption as
part of the twofold purpose for which God has accom-
plished so great a salvation on our behalf. Saved marvels at
God’s immeasurable filial love toward us, a love which
causes sinners to be saved from wrath and adopted to be
God’s sons. This is the “end or purpose for which we are
made,” “our highest point of glory,” and “the very acme of
our salvation” (108). Saved then links our adoption to
“heaven, our destination” (107), which in turn is identi-
fied as the New Jerusalem, and by inference, the Father’s
house. “We are promised rooms in our Father’s house,”
Saved avers, pointing to John 14:1-4, 25-28, and 1 John
3:1-3, “because we have been adopted into our Father’s
family” (107).
Saved’s errors and shortcomings here are several. The first
is the matter of adoption, the notion that we become the
children of God and brothers of Christ not through a
divine birth but merely through God’s legal acceptance of
us. Saved writes that “Jesus is God’s only natural Son. All
others enter His family through adoption in Christ” (110).
Such a statement directly contradicts the revelation of the
holy Scriptures, which tell us in unmistakable terms that
we as believers have actually been born of God and are
consequently His actual progeny. In John 1:13, the apostle
John uses the word begotten to describe the process by
which we have become God’s children. The apostle Paul
also makes this clear when he identifies Christ as the
“Firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). Christ was
surely born to be God’s firstborn Son (Acts 13:33; Rom.
8:29)—this is different from His being the only begotten
Son from eternity (John 1:18). In the same way that God
begot Christ in resurrection, God has regenerated us to be
His many sons (1 Pet. 1:3; Heb. 2:10). We are God’s sons
Volume VIII
No. 1
April 2003 85
and Christ’s brothers not by adoption; we are God’s kin
because He is our Father. Saved’s inaccurate view of son-
ship betrays a deep flaw in its understanding of God’s
salvation. So much has Saved limited itself to an outward
and judicial notion of salvation that it simply cannot grasp
the revelation of the Scriptures concerning our organic
relationship with our Father God. Since it understands
salvation in legal terms only, the only kind of sonship it can
fathom is one of legal adoption; the thought that we are
actual, bonafide sons of God seems not to be within
Saved’s universe of thought.
The second error, which again exposes Saved’s deficient
view of God’s salvation, is the identification (or rather, the
misidentification) of heaven as the New Jerusalem. Saved
designates the believer’s destiny as both “heaven” and “the
New Jerusalem,” implying that they are one and the same
(31, 121). The New Jerusalem is not heaven, nor is it any
physical entity. Rather, it is the ultimate issue of God’s
saving of the redeemed in His divine life so that they
might express Him corporately for eternity (for a detailed
exposition of this matter, please refer to Ed Marks’s “The
New Jerusalem—A Corporate Person” in A&C V:2).
The third error, which in fact underlies the two above
errors, also relates to Saved’s insufficient apprehension of
salvation—this time its failure to recognize the link
between the means and the goal of salvation. According to
Saved, Christ’s atoning death and our appropriation of it
make us the adopted sons of God today and the inhabi-
tants of heaven tomorrow; any meaningful cause-
and-effect relationship between the two is scant to none
(except in the sense that redemption qualifies us to enjoy
the goal of salvation). Indeed, Saved apparently does not
recognize the existence of anything that meaningfully joins
one to the other except perhaps, in the case of heaven, the
passage of time. The apostles, however, holding to the
truth of both judicial redemption and organic salvation,
realized that there is an aspect that plays a vital role in
actually maturing the believers as the sons of God. In this
sense, the organic salvation consummates the goal. We as
the sons of God are not born as adults, nor does the New
Jerusalem, with us as its constituents, suddenly material-
ize out of nowhere; we grow and mature through our
experience of God’s organic salvation in day-to-day situa-
tions throughout our lifetime.
Broadening Our View of God’s Salvation
Saved’s basic shortcoming is its total neglect of the organ-
ic aspect of God’s complete salvation. As a result, it has
an inadequate view of what we are saved from, overlooks
the very means by which we are saved throughout the
Christian life, and misinterprets the ultimate purpose for
which we are saved. Saved’s failure is not rare. So consis-
tently have Christian teachers overlooked the organic side
86 Affirmation & Critique
of God’s salvation and so unanimously have they adopted
and propounded a “redemption only” view of salvation
that this deficient view is considered normative by most
Christians. Consequently, Saved’s deficiencies will likely
raise few eyebrows in the church. Instead, it will merely
reinforce ingrained ways of thinking and bury already for-
gotten truths under more and thicker veils. God’s
complete salvation has both a judicial and an organic side;
both are of vital importance to God, and both must be
central to the teaching and experience of every Christian.
The readers of Saved, and those who espouse its deficient
view of salvation, would do well to consider Witness
Lee’s insight concerning God’s complete salvation in his
landmark book The Organic Aspect of God’s Salvation:
God’s judicial redemption as the procedure is purposeless
without God’s organic salvation. It would be merely for
sinners to be redeemed, have their sins forgiven, and
become righteous people justified by God, but the pur-
pose is unclear to the majority of believers who
mistakenly consider their going to heaven as the purpose
of their being redeemed and are unaware that, according
to the revelation of the holy Scriptures, God’s judicial
redemption as the procedure is with God’s organic salva-
tion as the purpose, which is to regenerate us, shepherd
us, sanctify us dispositionally, renew us, transform us, and
build us up into the Body of Christ, which ultimately con-
summates the New Jerusalem as the ultimate purpose of
God’s organic salvation to be God’s enlargement and
expression in eternity. (75-76)
T his being the case, a thorough re-alignment of
thought must take place in the Christian community
concerning the definition and thus the experience of the
salvation that God has prepared for us. While maintain-
ing the highest regard for and emphasis on God’s judicial
redemption, we as the regenerated sons of God must
seek to enter into the day-by-day experience of God’s sal-
vation in life. God’s judicial redemption, which Saved
presents by and large with insight and accuracy, is the
procedure by which God reaches the purpose of saving us
in His life. However, after our appropriation of Christ’s
judicial redemption, our need for the experience of the
divine life remains. This complete salvation consummates
in God’s ultimate intention, the fulfillment of His eternal
good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself—the New
Jerusalem, in which God is glorified in and through
humanity. May God have mercy upon us all, that we may
enter into so great a salvation.
by Nathan Betz
Works Cited
Lee, Witness. The Organic Aspect of God’s Salvation. Anaheim:
Living Stream Ministry, 1996.